Business: Effects of Strikes

"The public interest has not been seriously harmed by strikes in steel,
or by steel collective bargaining agreements, despite common public
opinion to the contrary." So said Harvard Professor E. Robert Livernash
last week in a forthright, polemical, 317-page study of collective
bargaining in the steel industry and its impact on the U.S. economy.

The conclusions of the report, which was ordered by outgoing Labor
Secretary James Mitchell last year in the wake of the record 116-day
steel strike, must have come as some surprise to the Secretary. During
that strike, he and the Labor Department, which published last week's
report, issued...